


The River of Stars

by the_glow_worm



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Tenzing-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25603600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_glow_worm/pseuds/the_glow_worm
Summary: The heavenly river was only made of stars, after all; the rivers on earth were made of blood and caste and lines on maps. All that and more separated them, but Laurence looked at him as if he didn’t know it.
Relationships: William Laurence/Tenzing Tharkay
Comments: 18
Kudos: 67
Collections: Temeraire Summer Exchange 2020





	The River of Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobinLorin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinLorin/gifts).



What he had was very little. It could be carried on his back, or packed into saddlebags, or left behind without a moment’s thought. Among his mother’s people, the desire for material possessions was the death of spiritual freedom, and perhaps that was even true. Tenzing had never in his life been so free: emancipated by the Scottish High Court and bestowed the ultimate freedoms; to hunger, to wander, to be alone.

His father’s people, it seemed, had something for everything; mementos, souvenirs, trophies. Heirlooms. Possessions that marked and clarified how one was related to each other, to history, to the future, to the land. A map made of things you could touch and hold.

Tenzing, traveling alone in the high wild places of the world, had nothing.

He had valued, for a while, the compass given to him by one of the officers in the Company, a well-meaning and inadequate return to all the years they had known him as a child, and the inheritance that had been stripped from him. He had clutched at it across strange lands as it pointed true north, following that arrow over high steppe and scrubland.

It was in the desert that he was suddenly caught off guard by a sandstorm. It howled at him in a language he felt he could almost understand, animated by a blind raging fury that seemed almost alive. He buried himself into his own cloak, turning his face into the hollow of his own body just to snatch at some room to breathe. The sand found him regardless, whipping at his face, scouring his throat and making him gasp and choke. He tried to pray, that day, and realized that he couldn’t do it, neither in English nor in Lhasa. He dragged the words up regardless, and they were as harsh in his throat as the sand was. He wrapped himself around his meager belongings and consigned himself instead to the mercy of the wind and the sky, deities to whom the promises of men were as meaningless as they were to fellow man.

It was night by the time the sandstorm had subsided. He had opened the saddlebag, parched and cracking and desperate, to find that sand had permeated every layer. The bitter camel jerky was crusted in a layer of sand; Tenzing felt grains grinding against his teeth as he ate. Sand had gotten in his water. And it was there on his treasured compass, falling in a silken stream from the face of the compass as he opened its case. Tenzing cupped it in his hand, struggled to make out the arrow by the light of the stars. The compass had been made in Britain, in his father’s far-away, incomprehensible country, it had been given to him by his father’s old friends, in lieu of the estates and the crystal glasses and the books and the manor houses that were their right as gentlemen, but not his. In his father’s house in the mountains, there were many compasses in his library that he had kept as curiosities, but Tenzing had only this one, and it was meant to point him home, to the place where he belonged.

The compass pointed to the right, and Tenzing let out a breath. Then he shifted his weight. The needle spun. It spun, and spun, and Tenzing’s world came spinning with it. It came to rest pointing not north, but at Tenzing’s chest--to the way he had already come. He jostled it, gently, and then frantically, but he could not make it point north again.

Tenzing wished the sandstorm would come back. He was sure he could have spoken its language, then, and matched the storm with his own fury, his own hurt, and driven it back. Instead his hand clenched around the compass, and with a cry he hurled it as far into the night as he could.

He had found his own way out of the desert that night, navigating by the lights of the stars and the planets. Later, he would watch birds and animals, how they oriented themselves by north and south, as if there was a magnetic line running within their own bodies. Tenzing envied them their gifts. The only such inheritance he had received was a heart that spun from east to west, like a broken compass.

* * *

He didn’t know how to react, when he found the compass again.

He had gone out into the sandstorm to check on the camels, leaving the aviators confused and uncomfortable in their tent. Tenzing was no longer that scared, green boy, caught in his first sandstorm. They did not frighten him, and behind the rage he could now hear, and recognize, helplessness. The winds clawed at him, but he only pulled his hood lower around his face.

The camels were fine, only bad-tempered and nervous. Tenzing left them to their shelter and began to trudge back to the aviators, tucked up against their dragon. He wondered if any of them would have noted his absence, and what they would make of it. If any of them would, he thinks it must be their captain, already giving him long and thoughtful glances, full of suspicion and fierce words in defense of Britain. Tenzing had never guided a dragon captain before, but he did not think they were any different than other men. Soon enough that suspicion within him would curdle into darker thoughts. Tenzing had seen it happen so many times before. He refused to expect any better of William Laurence, no matter how much he found himself wanting to. He had allowed himself to hope like this in the past--he would not do it again.

His foot brushed against something in the sand. Perhaps one the aviators had dropped something earlier in the rush to set up tents. Bracing against the stinging wind, Tenzing stooped and picked it up. It felt cool and metallic in his hand, the surface pitted by sand. Tenzing could tell just by feeling it that it had been lost in the desert for many years. It didn’t belong to the aviators at all.

Curiosity made him bring it back into the tent with him. It was as dark within as out, but he ran his fingers over the object. It was some sort of case, perhaps a pocketwatch; it was hinged on one side, and he was able to find the catch with his fingers and swing it open. A cascade of sand emerged from the inside of the case, and in that moment Tenzing knew exactly what it was that he held. 

In a vast desert, he had found his broken compass. 

For a moment he thought of his matches, wax-sealed and secured in his rucksack. He could light one, if only for a moment, and see--but Tenzing only closed the compass, swallowing, and slipped it into his pocket, resolving to be rid of it again.

He was afraid to see where it pointed.

* * *

Tenzing thought of that compass often, in years to come. It lived, wrapped in oilcloth, in the deepest part of his rucksack, his most hidden pocket, the bottom of his travelling-chest. He didn’t know why he kept it. It was only a possession, in the end, and he knew very well the value of what that was worth.

He thought of it again as he leaned against the railing of the _Allegiance_. The southern stars blazed, strange flowers in the dark garden of the sky. The constellations were unfamiliar; he would have to teach himself all over again how to navigate by these stars. Tenzing found himself looking forward to the challenge of it. He had heard that Australia was inhospitable country; that there were miles on end without water or peace, that the mountains were labyrinths that defied men, that the heat would kill, even if the wilderness didn’t. There were stories the Chinese told of animals with sufficient venom to kill a dragon outright, and Tenzing was certain there was at least a kernel of truth to them. It made him all the more eager to see the continent for himself. There was a certain peace in wild places, an honest brutalism that called to the fierce ragged parts of Tenzing's soul. Wounded animals looked for safe, dark places; Tenzing had escaped to the most dangerous places he knew of. He would rather be walking on starvation’s edge than in the most civilized garden.

"I was told a curious story while in China," said a voice behind him. Laurence. "Two lovers, destined to live on separate sides of the great river of heaven. Do you know it?"

He turned, slowly.

“I know it."

Laurence came and stood beside him, turning his face up into the light of strange stars. Tenzing, looking at his face, remembered why he had once loved gardens.

“Temeraire wanted to know why it should be magpies, not dragons, who made a bridge of their backs,” he said, a note of humor in his voice. “I couldn’t argue with him that it would be the more practical choice, but I should rather not encourage him to try to fly up to the heavens.”

“It is not to be recommended,” agreed Tenzing. “In my mother’s country there are peaks that rise higher than any dragon can fly, and that is itself a long way from heaven.”

“I should like to see it someday,” said Laurence.

“Heaven? You ought not be concerned; if such a place exists, you are sure to be first on the list.”

“No,” said Laurence. “Your mother’s country. Thibet.”

Tenzing went utterly still. He felt a hand brush him lightly on the shoulder, and he turned to find Laurence had stepped into his space. That was a shock, almost more than what he had said. Laurence was always careful not to overstep, not to offend or presume. But here he was, a hair’s breadth away from him.

The clarity of Laurence’s gaze, as always, took him by surprise. He looked at him like he was making him an offer. As if it was Tenzing’s to say yes or no, to touch him or not. Tenzing looked him in the face.

The Milky Way was a silver gash in the sky above them, a river that could be bridged more easily than the ones on earth. The heavenly river was only made of stars, after all; the rivers on earth were made of blood and caste and lines on maps. All that and more separated them, but Laurence looked at him as if he didn’t know it.

Tenzing moved forward, a deliberate step closer, but Laurence didn’t go. He reached out, instead. His face, coming closer to his own, blotted out the sky completely. 

In the dark, below the silver river of heaven, they made a bridge of their hands.

* * *

Tenzing had known from that moment where he belonged. He needed no sweetheart gifts to mark it, no letters or handkerchiefs. He carried it in his heart over the mountains, across oceans, through the desperate miles crossed on dragonback. His heart was a broken compass, but he knew where it led.

He didn’t know if this was right. He had always regarded his destiny as largely already written, in ink the color of his skin and eyes. But then William Laurence had come in need of a guide on his journey west, and he had been swept into loyalties he had thought he had forgotten. He hadn’t known that Britain, his country that hadn’t wanted him, could still inspire him nonetheless.

But maybe it wasn’t Britain, after all, that had inspired him, but the idea of home. He could offer Laurence refuge, if he had one. He could come back to his father’s house in the mountains and throw open all the doors and walk hand in hand with Laurence across the threshold, and at their heels would come all the dragons and strays that he naturally collected around himself, and that Tenzing always found himself surprised by. But in their home, Laurence could bring home all the orphans and beggars he could find. They would find ways to be alone; in the bedroom, in the gardens, in the deep, winter-soft woods.

Tenzing held onto that dream with everything that was in him. He did not always know where he was. He knew he had flown across the border into China some days ago. He was in the mountains. He was strapped to a narrow cot; he was watching a man bring a hammer down on his fingers. There were moments of pain and moments of lucidity, and they did not always intersect. He sometimes surfaced from long, slow dreams to find that he remembered screaming. But it was secondhand knowledge of himself; Tenzing found the waking world bizarre. His hands did not work there, for one thing; it didn’t make sense to him, because in dreams he could curl his fingers in Laurence’s hair and draw him close.

“Napoleon is on the march to Russia,” he said to Laurence, in the garden of his father’s home, and he smiled at him as if he had whispered like a lover.

“Tenzing,” he said urgently, and there was suddenly light in his room. Tenzing opened his eyes. He was in the dream again, that strange unpleasant dream full of pain and screaming. “Tenzing,” Laurence said again, insistently. His fingers twitched. There were hands on him, gentle and strong, lifting him off the cot. Tenzing knew those hands. There had been a ship, many long lifetimes ago. He remembered this man; he remembered his eyes as he leaned down to kiss him, and the bridge they had once made of their hands. He was awake, and Laurence was here. They were together, regardless of whether in their father’s gardens or in a mountain cave; the dream was true.

The broken compass was somewhere in the caves, but he did not ask to search for it. He left it behind as he let Laurence lead him out into the light.

* * *

He watched the dragons come and land on the wide, grassy lawn in the deepening twilight, their wings casting long shadows all down the valley and the villages within. It was a good turnout. All the formation had come, and more than a few besides; Arthur Hammond was there, for example, and Temeraire’s unharnessed friends from the war. He was certain that up and down the valley, people were whispering about the convocation of dragons he had summoned, but Tenzing didn’t mind. Let them whisper. He had been tortured and imprisoned for this, had spied and lied and done worse things, and if all that disturbed his peace were the whispers of town gossips, he should count himself lucky. Tenzing and Laurence came forward, as they all dismounted, to greet them.

Emily Roland and Demane promptly disappeared as soon as they had hit the ground, but the rest of them made a party of it. The mansion had some genuine historical interest to it, so they had some good pretense for a tour, after which they could go and play lawn games on the green and count themselves productive. The servants brought out blankets and bottles as night settled in, and they all gathered to watch the stars. They were falling by the dozens. Somewhere to their left, Sutton and Warren were bantering about some long-ago joke. Little was whispering in Granby’s ear and making him laugh, and the pair were trading cheerful jabs with Chenery. Captain Harcourt had brought her son, who was staring transfixed at the night sky. Sipho had commandeered a scope out of Laurence’s collection of naval equipment and was hastily writing notes in the dark. The ink would likely be entirely illegible in the morning. Even Emily and Demane had emerged, looking distinctly rumpled. Laurence had pretended not to notice when they snuck an entire bottle for themselves, and dragged their blanket to a more secluded spot. He was leaning a head on Tenzing’s shoulder. On the grass their hands were touching. They were watching the stars fall from the great river of heaven, and in that moment, he had everything.


End file.
